Beginning to understand the challenges of HIV/AIDS starts by dealing with some of the common myths people tend to believe about the disease. Following are some of the myths and the actual facts about the disease.

1. HIV/AIDS is mostly a disease of homosexual men.
Primarily spread by heterosexual sex, HIV/AIDS now infects as many women as men worldwide. Although the disease was first recognized in the United States among gay men, it is also significantly spread among IV drug users. Internationally, it is more often a disease of heterosexuals.

2. HIV/AIDS is mostly an African problem.
Found in every country in the world, HIV infections are growing most rapidly in countries outside of Africa, including India and Russia. Many African countries have been decimated by HIV/AIDS, but the impact is also significant in Asia, Eastern Europe, and India.

3. HIV/AIDS spreads mostly because of poor moral choices.
Women are often infected by their husbands. Children most often contract HIV by being born to HIV+ mothers. It isn’t helpful or meaningful to determine who is at fault or who is an innocent victim.

4. Plenty of money is being spent on fighting HIV/AIDS.
While a great deal of money is being spent by governments, private organizations, and individuals to fight HIV/AIDS, much more is needed.

5. HIV/AIDS is no longer a problem in developed countries like Canada,United States e.t.c.
Because medications (Antiretrovirals or ARVs) are widely available in the developed countries, the death rate has decreased. But the number of people living with HIV/AIDS has not decreased and the rate of new infections is not declining.

6. ARVs are widely available.
While antiretrovirals are becoming more available, they are still difficult to find in many rural areas and in some countries. Both drugs and systems to distribute them are needed in many poor countries.

7. A cure exists for HIV/AIDS.
While there are treatments to prolong life, there is no cure. Many scientists are working on a cure but few believe there will ever be one way to effectively cure someone because the virus constantly changes.

8. There is no hope for those with HIV/AIDS.
Great progress is being made in treatments and the rate of infant infection in some countries is dropping rapidly. There is also a dropping rate of new infections in many countries with strong prevention programs.

9. If I’m not HIV+, the disease doesn’t affect me.
The high rate of HIV/AIDS infections is causing instability in many countries and reversing the progress made in development. It is also causing a worldwide tuberculosis pandemic. Every community is affected. A pandemic affects everyone even if not immediately recognized.

10. There’s nothing I can do.
Everyone can do something. First, become educated. Then help teach others in your church, school, and community. Begin to care and pray about how you and your church, school, and community can become involved. Begin to share your knowledge with your peers to help break HIV stigma and discrimination that exists in most communities today and to encourage others to be a part of this fight to end the stigma of those affected or infected with HIV/AIDS.

At school, while very young, I heard of the word ‘Womanizer.’ I had no idea what that means, so I took the dictionary and read ” A manwholikesmanywomenandhasshortsexualrelationshipswiththem.” I said to myself, that’s not the way I would like to live, especially in those days when Gonorrhea is very common.

At 19, I was still a celibate and hadn’t tasted the ‘golden apple,’ yet, surprisingly, I had no desire to find out how ‘delicious or sour it may be.’ I often hear some of my friends, talking about their girlfriends, and wonder how they had them.

Without even searching for a girlfriend, I had one during school athletics competition. Extremely beautiful dark complexioned girl called Esther. Any time she puts her hand around my neck, I feel something in my breast pocket. It was money.

I was just proud to have a girlfriend and I spoke about her to my classmates, but very green, I didn’t give her what often happens when a door is closed behind a man and a woman. After Esther, came Lydia. She was actually the first girl who thought me how to do it at the age of twenty. The contents of her love letters made me to believe that she graduated from a ‘Love School.’

When I saw her naked body, I gazed at her like Adam gazing at ‘The Apple of Temptation’ on the tree. She laid down and I took my position. But inexperienced Joe was just on top of her motionless, waiting for a miracle to take place . She then asked me to jerk my body up and down.

After following her instructions, I started feeling something unusual flowing through my body like electric current. This unusual feeling is hard to describe. Like one under a trance, I don’t think I would have got the energy to escape if a charged elephant or a wild lion is coming my way. After some few minutes, I felt like I’m in a perfect place of happiness, paradise. I wasn’t aware that this inexperienced love life is going to help me one day.

From there on, struggling to be a man was my priority, than having a girlfriend, until I got married in my thirties. After marriage, I realized the importance, gem and quality of a woman. The long years without a woman moulded me to treasure my wife, making it totally impossible to love any woman apart from her.

To many, cheating is the best part of relationship, because it’s nice to taste different kinds of food. But just as a man gets food poisoning and diarrhea after eating contaminated food, the same way a man can expose himself to sexually transmitted diseases, then wished you had never done, but it’s too late.

There are many ways to adore your girlfriend or partner for ever. Whenever you’re watching an interesting film or program on the television, don’t lose all your interest to the program. Steal a minute to look at your man or woman. He or she will ask you: Why are you looking at me like that? “I love you,” say to him or her.

Little things in life improve relationship than being rich. There are many domestic activities. Share those responsibilities with your partner. If she does the laundry, do the pressing and if she does the shopping, surprise her with a delicious breakfast preparations. Above all try to maintain respect and remain faithful to each other, even though to err is human.

I don’t have much Twitter followers. Like many others, I’m not interested in buying any fake followers. The reason since I officially joined Twitter on July 2011, the growing of my followers has been very slow with only 1,400 followers.

I’m very proud of all my followers, from all walks of life, including the great writer Joel Friedlander, CNN’s Jim Clancy, Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Her Majesty Koningin Mathilde (The Queen of Belgium.)

The landscape of the media is gradually changing, as the reading standard on social platforms gradually declines too. I have written hundreds of articles, but none has proved to be a masterpiece to me, until January 28, 2016 after posting an article captioned

“Spend Your Money On Bread And Water Not Sickness”

It seems the article caught the attention of the right readers at the right time. It suddenly generated Tweets, followed by re-tweets, on and on, increasing my Twitter followers significantly from 1,400 to 2,000. I followed everyone that follows me, because that’s the only way to thank them and show my appreciation.

Writing is creative and interesting, yet very tough. I am therefore glad to see the progress of what I do in different ways.

The Bible says: In the beginning, God created man and gave him dominion over all things, but the greed and selfishness of man have exhausted the earth, eating up all the flesh from the earth, just because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve.

Again the Bible quotes: “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it.” Are we still blaming Adam and Eve, for the same violence in the past and what is tearing our society apart today?

If you want to see the cruelty, greed, bloodthirsty, power thirsty, hypocrisy etc, of some people, first give them an inch, they will encroach to a yard, or give them a yard, they will encroach to a mile. This is the nature of most men, even though:

“The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” Mahatma Gandhi.

If a man will plot his wife’s death or a woman will poison her own husband, because of life insurance money, then it’s clear that when it comes to money matters, life is valueless to many people. If a mother will kill her own child, because the child’s father has separated himself from her, shows the cruelness of some people.

If a man takes a gun to kill another man, and steals his money and property, reveals the dark side some wicked-minded people and if after rape a man kills a woman, because he doesn’t want to be identified, shows we are living in an extremely dangerous world.

I have read many shocking stories around the world, but nothing moved me so hard like this story which took place in Tanzania, Africa. To get rich quick, following the instructions of the Soothsayer, Voodoo-man, Medicine-man, whatever you can call it, the man allegedly put his sister in a septic tank for four years for money rituals.

The unidentified man who is believed to have lied to people that his sister was dead instantly became rich after her supposed death. His maid is the one who discovered the girl in the tank after being curious about her boss’s visits to the tank every morning before going to work. What kind of world are we living in? And what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world without taking anything to his grave? Full- story:

From generation to generation, people have been blaming Adam, Eve and Satan for the crime and violence destroying the world. But who is Satan? The Satanic people are among us in the likely of men. They are everywhere as politicians, pastors, criminals, terrorists etc.

Adam and Eve have had their share of disgrace, humiliation, and punishment. Instead of people keep blaming them for the destruction of the world, they should bear the responsibility to restore the nation’s dignity.

When a government in Africa is corrupt, there are also some MNCs and their shareholders who stand behind this government and push it to become more corrupt. Whenever a government becomes autocratic denying its citizens freedoms and rights, there are MNCs behind providing weapons to exact violence against its people.

Whenever there is a corrupt politician in Africa stealing money meant for schools, hospitals, roads, and delivery of safe water and sanitation you have a big MNC bank assisting in the transfer of the money to safe haven destinations.

This cosy relationship between the political and business elite in Africa and MNCs in Europe and North America does not only affect governance but it is one of the main reasons why economic underachievement, poverty, hunger and instability permeate almost all African countries.

The parasites who parade themselves as leaders of the continent have for over the years colluded and connived with MNC vampires who since the days of slavery have been the main instrument used by western countries to strip Africa of its rich resources and to keep its inhabitants desperately poor.

Global Witness has produced documents that have implicated American, Belgian, British, French, German, Japanese and Chinese firms and business entities. The dirty tactics employed by western governments, the MNCs, World Bank, IMF, WTO are responsible for the demise of the African continent. Western countries led by the US, Britain, France and lately by China, continue to sell weapons to horrible dictators to crash democratic forces throughout the continent.

They continued to finance brutal wars in Africa ( Libya, Somalia, Ivory Coast, DRC) with the aim of keeping Africa destabilized while their corporations steal the natural resources such as oil, gas, gold and other precious metals complicit with western media.

In a similar vein Global Financial Integrity has demonstrated how western MNCs working in Africa used fraud accounting, tax evasion and other financial malpractices to cheat Africans of the billions of dollars that could be used to develop the continent. IMF and World Bank on their part are in cahoots with MNCs and western creditors to sell their toxic economic policies and poisonous, heavily laden conditional loans to African countries that keep them in odious debts that they spend so much of their GDP in servicing them to the neglect of the human security needs of their people.

Switzerland, hiding behind her discredited illegal financial and banking secrecy laws and infrastructure, continues to play host to more tan $150 billion that is siphoned off from the continent annually by the political and business leaders.

As a child growing up in a strongly religious family, I was thought that everything which is opposite to the teachings of the Holy Bible, including laziness is a sin. I tried my best to live a clean life. We were thought to believe that Israel, Jerusalem, and other Biblical countries were all in heaven, without a slight knowledge those countries were on the same earth we are living today.

When I left my family looking for a job, I tried to be sincere and prevented doing anything wrong which could land me in jail. I read that jail changes people’s attitude to be good or worse. But I wasn’t interested to know the positive or negative influences of jail on people. My only interest is never to be there because it’s not the right place for me.

In the year 1990, from Lagos, Nigeria, I made a transit in Rome, on my way to German. In Rome, I was detained at the Fiumicino airport. The Italian immigration regularly does that to many foreigners, especially Africans. Like a tourist, I walked around the airport lounge without a room to sleep and food for three days. On the third, I was really starving, so I approached one of the immigration officials and said to him that I am hungry. He looked at my face and asked me “Am I your father?” Then he walked away.

Without knowing what the officials have in store for me, I handed over an application for asylum as a journalist and it worked, because I have some few publications over my profession on me. On the fourth day, from nowhere came one of the immigration officers, he said to me: “Your application has been accepted, today the police will come to take you to Rome.” I was shocked beyond expression.

The good Samaritan didn’t only deliver the unexpected message, but he pulled out from his pocket a number of notes and said to me: “I don’t want my colleagues to see me giving you money, buy some food to eat at the airport.” I didn’t take the money. I told him: “This important information you have given to me has taken all the hunger away, thank you.” He walked away with his money.

On the fourth day, the police came, just as the officer told me and took me in a police car to the city, Rome, and left me there to fight for my survival. Without anywhere to sleep, I passed all my nights at the Central Train Station. Among other Africans, we watched a big television screen during the day to forget our misery, then in the night, I go to sleep at my hiding place. The police and the workers at the train station never discovered the place I slept.

After some time, I discovered places where I could eat every day without paying for food. I could take my bath and take some clothes. One of such places was at ‘Via Dandolo.’ Daniela, the head of the Caritas (Charity) at Via Dandolo, was a very good woman, but one of her female workers was a very bad woman. A thief. Since we had no address, our letters passed through the Caritas at Via Dandola and this woman took the opportunity to steal money from our letters.

I caught her twice, so I wasn’t surprised when I lost the 10 pounds a friend sent me from England, but I didn’t tell Daniela about it. Through the Caritas, I had my initial lessons and attended classes to learn the Italian. I was one of the best immigrants who could write and speak the language fluently, yet my life was miserable because I was still sleeping at the train station.

In Rome, I was robbed, admitted and operated at a hospital, but the nurse refused to touch me, because of my color, thus; every morning when on duty, she calls someone to attend to me, but she had time for every Italian patient at the hospital. I was once sitting in the hospital’s garden after the operation, when an Italian old man, one of the patients came close to me, looked at my face and said to me: “Marocchino motaccizoa.” – an insult, after mistakenly taken me as a Moroccan. I didn’t say a word.

Then all of a sudden, as if it was announced on the radio, all the immigrants in Rome, without accommodation, discovered an abandoned Pasta factory called ‘Pantanella.’ Pantanella is notoriously known for all criminal activities, including drug peddling and crime, similar to drug cartel zones of Mexico. One needs strength, courage, heart and braveness to survive at that place. Italians think they are brave, but many of them dare to pass Via Casilina, the street Pantanella is located in the night.

That was the place I lived and worked as a toilet cleaner for thousands of immigrants, using six containers as toilets, to raise money to feed. I was employed by the Muslim head at the place. It’s terrible and frightening to live at Pantenella. It wasn’t a prison, but the place, I think was tough like Alcatraz, because of the criminal activities many illegal immigrants engaged in feeding.

The abandoned factory accommodated both soft and hardened criminals from various countries, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Africa etc. I lived in Pantanella for four months, and the Italian government tired of the crimes going on in that abandoned Pasta factory ejected all the foreigners.

But the Italian government did something great for the African immigrants. Something we weren’t expecting. The government paid for two weeks stay in a hotel for all the Africans, with the ultimatum that before the two weeks expired, we should find a place on our own to live.

Through a very good sympathetic woman called Nana, (she died in Rome a few years ago) I got a job as a houseboy to serve one journalist called Claudio Lavazza, working at television station TG2, belonging to the former Italian Prime Minister, Sylvio Berlusconi. He provided me accommodation and paid me well. Besides, he gave me the new version of Fiat Cinque Cento (500) to drive. It may be likely that I was the first black man in the entire Italy to drive the new Fiat Cinque Cento when it freshly came out. I met other journalist friends of Claudio, including Michele Cucuzza.

After three years, I said goodbye to Rome and returned to Africa. I married and returned to Europe once again but this time choosing Amsterdam. ‘Overseas Chronicle: The Rome and Amsterdam Experience’ is a book once started you’ll find it hard to put away, because of the shocking intriguing stories in the book. Find out more of what happened to me in Rome and later in Holland, which led me to detention in Amsterdam.

‘Joseph’s coat of many colors’ couldn’t prevent Dolly Parton from plastic surgery. Wasn’t she beautiful before the surgical operation?

Once working in Amsterdam, I said to my colleague: “The old photographs of Michael Jackson show how handsome he was, wondering the motive behind his nose job.”

The colleague looked at me and said: “If you have money like Michael Jackson, believe me, you will do more than what he did. Money tells people what to do, you’re poor the reason you’re criticizing him.”

I didn’t argue with him but I thought of what he said to me the whole day. I have never hated any part of my body since from my youth and through my adulthood. So what does he mean that if I have money I will do more than what he did?

It’s unfortunate that many people don’t like they way they look or hate something particularly on the body, which they think don’t make them attractive.

As modern technology advances, people that want to change something on the body are actively engaged to plastic surgery, despite apparent negative consequences.

Those who undergo surgical correction may seem very happy after the operation some few years later, but I don’t have words to describe how horrible some of them looked like in their ripe age.

Whether smaller nose, sexy lips, tighter tummy or perkier breasts, plastic surgery can take it’s toll on your health one day. Many went under knife to be beautiful, but at the moment they looked like creatures from different planet trying to find home among us.

Yes, technology can improve your health and life but you can never cheat nature. Your body and leg reveal you are over fifty but your face reveals you are about thirty-five or you wear mask. Are you satisfied about that? Don’t deceive yourself.